"My old man has strictly told us not to hurt each other anymore,'' Adelaide's AFL Rising Star runner-up Brad Crouch said on Monday after his brother Matt arrived at the club four days after being selected with the Crows' first pick at the national draft.

"Hopefully we can be professional enough now not to touch each other.''

Phil put the hard word on his two boys after years of scraps between the pair - the latest leaving Matt with a black eye at the AFL draft combine.

Brad and Matt - born just 15 months apart - learnt to fight for the ball in the backyard of their Ballarat home, leading to both being drafted to the Crows.

The pair cannot recall how many fights they've been in but they have no regrets, believing their extreme competitiveness kickstarted their journey to top-flight football.

"It's always been good to be competitive with each other,'' Brad, 19, said.

"Over the past couple of years we've probably matured a little bit more and are probably getting a little bit better at being able to put up with each other, which is good.''

Matt, 18, said their backyard battles "helped me a fair bit''.

"Being the younger brother he was always a bit bigger me than me and it helped me a lot to go against him and helped me get to where I am today,'' he said.

Brad is convinced he's won more wars than he's lost.

"I reckon I've got him covered after a few years of being bigger than him but he's starting to catch up to me a little bit,'' he said.

The brothers say it is their dream to play AFL together and believe they can complement each other's styles.

Brad is more of a running midfielder and Matt the slower contested-ball king.

"Having played a little bit with each other early in our careers we gelled pretty well and we always had a pretty good awareness of where each other was on the field and the strengths and weaknesses of each other, so hopefully over time we'll work well together here,'' he said.

While they will be comrades on the field, the pair will be separated off it.

Brad has moved in with star Crows key forward Taylor Walker, while Matt will live with game-breaking onballer Patrick Dangerfield.

"It will be good to see the way a gun player like that goes about things,'' Matt said.

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